Councils to be £1 BILLION out-of-pocket from planning fee undercharging

NO, PLEASE don’t allow local authorities to set their own fees! We might get £1,000 per sq ft for a small family home improvement and nothing at all for a 500 home development, so beloved are big developers by EDDC!

“The government has failed to deliver on a promise to allow councils to increase planning application fees, leaving councils facing a £1bn bill, the Local Government Association has said.

The umbrella-body believed councils would spend some £1bn above this fee income to cover the cost of developers’ planning applications by 2022 unless the government acted.

Last February’s housing white paper Fixing our Broken Housing Market promised councils a 20% uplift in fees from July 2017 if they invested this in their planning department.

A further 20% was offered at an unspecified time to councils delivering against commitments for new homes in their area.

The LGA said the July increase had failed to materialise and it was unclear when it would.

Longer term, councils want powers to set planning fees locally as they see fit, as developers are charged fees for the cost of handling applications but these are set nationally and may not reflect the real cost to a council. …”